1/ Lemme do a 1-slide presentation since I'm feeling job sick. Title: How to Actually Manage Attention Without Smashing Your Phone and Retreating to a Log Cabin pic.twitter.com/kEPZUh7g50

2/ Premise: FOMO is good. Being plugged in is good. There is valuable info at all levels from twitter gossip to philosophy books. You should stay plugged in. You can manage anxiety and beat the House without resorting to shaming social platforms into managing attention for you.

You know that line about judging people by their actions rather than their words? What about people whose only non-trivial output is words? (assume their actions are boringly uncontroversial, like say living basic middle class life funded by job at paper factory)

Here’s a way.

Judge them by topics rather than methods of thought. The thinker’s equivalent of action is choice of topic. Almost always, all the real risk is there (but CRUCIALLY may not be borne by the thinker). Methodology (analytical, empirical, logical, narrative, metaphoric) is secondary

There is a particular kind of motte and bailey maneuver where criticism of the risky part (topic/content) is redirected to an innocent-faced defense of the safe part (method). *Especially when the risk of any erroneous conclusions on the topic is borne by others.*